Pensamiento reflexivo e intertextualidad

By drawing on critical realist ontology, Sealey and Carter (2004: 139) distinguish between the set of propositions or “‘ideational elements’ of knowledge, belief and norms” accessible to a group of people - the cultural system -, the roles and

the power actually to do things in the world, human agents. Culture in this perspective is different from but strongly related to social practices100 which it orders and shapes (and vice versa). According to the Parekh (2000: 145),

[b]eliefs are necessarily general, even vague and amenable to different interpretations, whereas practices which are meant to regulate human conduct and social relations are fairly determinate and concrete.

Furthermore, “… while beliefs are not easy to discover and enforce, conformity to practices is easily ascertainable and enforceable.” Social practices are thus cultural but at the same time different from beliefs and subject to their own logic, characteristics and patterns of change. Institutions and their concomitant practices can, for instance, be changed for political and other reasons without people believing in their merit which in turn might make these structural changes unsuccessful101.

. … beliefs primarily pertain to the realm of thought and practices to that of conduct. Beliefs are therefore more likely to be influenced by new ideas and knowledge, practices by new social situations and experiences. (ibid)

Conversely, a society’s belief system can change while its structure or practices do not or at a different pace as, for instance, in the case of the former ex-GDR in which a large part of the population had long since internally emigrated or chosen ‘exit’ before

100

The notion of social practices has become a popular concept in applied linguistics in order to address the crucial relation between structure and agency, or between micro and macro aspects (see for instance Hanks 1996). While acknowledging its strengths, I nevertheless agree with Sealey and Carter’s argumentation as outlined above that it is necessary to differentiate between social practices and ideational elements.

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On a more general level, the distinction between culture and practices, offers another perspective on the relation between culture and the nation state without conflating the two. Since the nation still exists as a territory, a political history and as an interpretative community of citizens and consumers, it can be viewed as a pre-existing structure with complex effects on social practices and - although more

contingently - on the belief system(s) people hold. This perspective sheds light on the fact that national identities continue being a resource for identification enhanced and held in place by strong political, educational and economic structures, relations and interests. Stereotypes and prejudices are consequently not only misperceptions in individual minds, waiting to be changed but also socially distributed discourses often anchored in unjust social relations. Encounters between migrant workers and their hosts, for instance, are deeply influenced by the different social positioning of those interacting.

the official state and its practices102 ended. After the end of the former ex-socialist state and the so-called ‘reunification’ [Wiedervereinigung] with its capitalist

counterpart, structures changed at an enormous speed which left many people with the desire to “retain a sense of continuity or stability” (Parekh 2000: 145).

A fourth and last difference, the same author points out is that

… coherence among beliefs is a matter of intellectual consistency and is different in nature from that among practices where it is basically a matter of practical compatibility. (ibid)

This view allows one to relate the cultural domain to the other domains of social life without falling back onto an entity view. Actions may derive from ideas but do not have to (and vice versa), i.e. their relation is contingent, and the effect of their interactions entails to a certain degree inconsistency or contradiction:

Since ties between beliefs and practices are loose and volatile and there is often a hiatus between the two, no culture is ever a fully consistent and coherent whole. (ibid)

Practices, such as for instance global consumer lifestyles, interact in complex and contingent ways with different local traditions, structures, practices and belief systems at the local level which take them up and interpret them in specific but heterogeneous and contingent ways. Hybridization and mix, conflict and harmonization are, however, nothing new but lie at the core of cultural meaning making processes:

... der Gestus der Kultur selbst einer des Vermischens ist: Es gibt Wettbewerb und Vergleich, es wird umgewandelt und uminterpretiert, zerlegt und neu zusammengesetzt, kombiniert und gebastelt. (Wagner 2003: 11)

[… the nature of culture is mixing itself: there is competition and comparison, transformation and re-interpretation, it becomes decomposed and recomposed, combined and assembled.]

In contrast to strong poststructuralist and postmodern perspectives, though, which emphasize the free interplay of symbols and identities, it is important to stress that

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As Parekh (2000: 146) describes it, a culture “… can be eroded and hollowed out from within without anyone noticing it, and might even be replaced by another in what the superficial observer takes to be a revolutionary change.”

culture is historically structured and socially related to structure, institutions and relations of power. The ideas available in the cultural system are ideational resources which can be utilized in interactions depending on constraining or reinforcing effects of social practices and cultural, social, material and linguistic resources available for specific actors in particular settings103. It is thus important to put

… semiotic processes into context. This means locating them within their necessary dialectical relations with persons (hence minds, intentions, desires, bodies), social relations, and the material world – locating them within the practical engagement of embodied and socially organised persons with the material world. (Fairclough, Jessop and Sayer 2001: 7)104

In fact, culture often performs the ideological role of legitimizing the prevailing system and relations of power:

… all economic and political battles are fought out at the cultural level as well, and all cultural struggles have an inescapable political and economic

dimension. (Parekh 2000: 152)

The idea that culture is never neutral and always imbricated in power relations is well captured for instance by the concept of hegemony as developed by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937). His theory has to be understood from the background of a Marxist disillusion with the collaboration of the working class in fascist countries like Germany and Italy in the 1920s and 1930s and thus their own contribution to a system of inequalities they themselves had to endure. Contrary to orthodox Marxist theory which assumed that economic forces lead to antagonistic class consciousness

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See also Sealey and Carter (2004: 141, going back to Layder 1997: 77): “Ideas available in the cultural system are known and responded to by individuals (psychobiography): utilized in interactions (situated activity); reinforced through routinized practices, whether explicitly articulated or not (social settings); and differentially available to different groups of people, both in themselves and as a result of inequitable distributions of material goods (contextual resources).”

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While no culture exists in a social vacuum, neither do economic relations exist in a cultural vacuum. Both are inherently interrelated as will be outlined at a later point. As Swingewood (1998: 9-10) argues, however, ‘dialectical’ is not a very helpful description: “The question of the relation between subjective ‘dispositions’and objective socio-economic conditions is clearly crucial for the development of a sociology of culture. But merely to designate the relation as ‘dialectical’ is to offer an empty, formalist explanation. What is the relationship, for example, between dispositions and social context, class membership, education, family, etc.? How do dispositions arise from the social conditions, and what are their distinctive properties and relation with the specifics of cultural production? Which social group and individuals choose or select specific cultural forms as exemplars of value? And what is value? Is it historically and sociologically constituted or does it arise spontaneously […]?”

and ultimately uprising and revolution, Gramsci stressed the agency of collective and individual agents beyond the confines of social classes. Culture understood as

hegemony is not simply a symbolic force exerted from above but a subtle and

complex mix of coercion and consent. Originating in the intent of an ascending, albeit not homogeneous, social class, striving for a larger system of alliances and the support of the majority in order to legitimize their own claim to power, it is an attempt to integrate, incorporate and mobilize other social groups and classes via a “synthesis of political, intellectual and moral elements” (Swingewood 1998: 15)105 thus binding together “various opposing and potentially conflictual groups and classes into a unified social whole” (ibid: 16). A relative autonomous system (based on institutions such as civil society and education) thus produces cultural forms couched in

dichotomies such as ‘new’ and ‘better’ versus ‘old’ and ‘outmoded’ and a set of allegedly universal values which are, at the same time, unique to this specific constellation unique to this particular group:

As Gramsci makes clear, common sense is established by a process of consent to ruling CLASS attitudes and interests which are thereby accepted by society at large as being in its own general interests. What is specific and partial is therefore universalized and what is cultural is naturalized to the point of being taken for granted in a view of the world as simply ‘the way things are’. In a connected and extremely influential concept in Gramsci’s writings this process is then understood as vital to the maintenance of economic and political

HEGEMONY. (Brooker 1999: 36)

Hegemony is, however, always unfinished, an instable project that generates resistance and dissent (Swingewood 1998: 16).

105 _{See also Fairclough (1992: 9) who explains hegemony “… in the sense of a mode of domination}

which is based upon alliances, the incorporation of subordinate groups and the generation of consent.” In the case of the nationalist fascist regimes, the hegemonic bloc fused popular and nationalist culture and worked across social classes and strata in an integrative way.